Echoes
by Bill The Bard
Summary: The Exile's thoughts as the Mass Shadow Generator is activated. A somewhat dark fic, this one!


Disclaimer: KOTOR belongs to BioWare, Star Wars belongs to LucasArts. This fanfic makes no claims to ownership of either franchise.

Welcome to 'Echoes', a stand-alone KotOR story. A take on what the Exile went through when the Mass Shadow Generator was activated. Please let me know what you think, okay?

Echoes

"General, the Mandalorians are breaching the main defensive line!"

"Sir, the fleet is falling back - they're taking too many casualties to hold the line!"

As if I can't see that for myself. I curse silently - Revan has done his job well. Here on Malachor V are all the troops he feels aren't as committed to the war effort as he and his advisors are - meaning they aren't as willing to indulge in the slaughter, to revel in death, as he, Malak and the others have become. What happened to the idea of coming to war to defend the innocent? Of stopping the Mandalorians because it's the right thing to do? Dust on the wind, I can see that now.

We're dead, all of us. I know little of this 'Mass Shadow Generator' that Revan - I will not call him 'Lord Revan' as the sycophants surrounding him do - has ordered deployed here is capable of. All I know, all I need to know is that it is the Republic's ultimate weapon of mass destruction. When it's triggered, we will all die - us here on the ground, the ships still close to the planet, the Mandalorians on foot and in space. The devastation will be great, the carnage brutal, the death toll greater than anything seen yet in this war.

Just as Revan wants it. I see that now.

My troops are loyal to me, and for that, he has signed their death warrant - those under his command must have no loyalty greater than that they owe to him, it seems. If they have, then they're marked for death. The ships supporting us are second-line ships, not the best or most ably-crewed in the Fleet - cannon-fodder deployed to draw the Mandalorians to their deaths. Bait for Revan's trap.

I should have seen the darkness growing there, behind his eyes, the coldness, the sense of superiority, the greed for power at any price. But I couldn't see him. I knew him too well to see the signs, we had been friends on Dantooine, before the war. I saw what I wanted to see, I realise now far, far too late.

Now I have my orders and no way to countermand them. If I disobey, he will have me executed - I can that determination to crush dissent clearly now. The troops will believe whatever lies he tells them about my death, save for those who I have led into battle these last few years - they would see through his words. And that is why he will now kill them too. There must be no witnesses to his fall.

Besides, for all I know, he can trigger the device remotely - it wouldn't surprise me to learn he has such a capability. He always did plan ahead. He has planned these deaths for some time now, I think. A sacrifice to the altar of his ambition.

"Activate the control panel for the Mass Shadow Generator." My voice is calm, though I'm screaming inside. I will kill my men, those who I've led as ably as I could, who have served both the Republic and myself loyally and bravely, with honour, through all the battles we have fought together. I have done my best to keep them alive no matter the odds, no matter the situation, refusing to simply throw their lives away. They have repaid me with their trust, their loyalty. We are bound together, they and I, until we die. And now that the time has come for them to lay down their lives, it's only right that I should be the one to take their lives, that I be the one to detonate the weapon that will kill them all. And I will die with them. As it should be.

The device flashes green across the board, and the technicians lock their gazes on me. They watch as I approach the Generator, knowing as well as I do that their doom is upon them, that their deaths will come in the next few moments. I place my hand on the firing button, take a deep breath, commend my men to the Force - and press the button.

I was not expecting to live another second. I expected nothing at all. Not this … this tugging inside me. F-Force-bonds! My Masters used to tell me I forged bonds more quickly and easily than anyone they had ever know - and I had forged such bonds with the men and women I command! I didn't know, thought they followed me out of trust and mutual respect! Not because we were bound together!

The bonds pull tight, and it's as if I'm being torn apart, pulled in a thousand different directions at once. My life is being shredded, and I scream in the agony of the damned. I feel .. feel warm liquid erupt from my nose, my ears, my mouth and eyes and skin as I double over, vomiting blood onto the once-pristine floor. But it's nothing to the pain within me! Pain like I've never felt, not even with the worst battlefield injury. Talons have hooked into my soul, and now I'm being ripped apart ..

And now there are screams within my head - not my own though, I can't hear my own cries over the cacophony of terror and agony that now roars inside my skull. Millions of souls scream with the howls of the damned, and I can hear them all, feel them all as if their pain was my pain, their terror my own.

I'm dying a million times over, even as my own body weakens and fades. The Jedi are dying too, I can feel their deaths sharp and clear - they're not joining the Force! They're winking out of existence, just … vanishing!

What have I done? These deaths, they're my fault! I activated the Mass Shadow Generator, these deaths are all on my head! As those bound to me die, they're dragging me along with them. Perhaps that's only fitting - I caused their deaths, I should die too.

But some part of me refuses to give in. I feel - I feel the bonds, stretch, stretch and tear, as if pieces of my own soul were being torn from my body and I howl in anguish with each piece I lose. Somehow I'm breaking the bonds, cutting myself off from them. I don't how I'm doing it - mere instinct perhaps, just as it was without my knowledge that the bonds were forged in the first place. The cries of agony and terror swell within my mind even so, as the ships above us crash and burn, their crews being incinerated in the fiery explosions that mark the ships' passing. I feel each and every death, feel my flesh crisp and crack from the heat, feel my eyes melt and run down my face as my hair burns like wildfire, feel bones break and guts spill, over and over again. I am reliving the deaths of everyone on Malachor V and on the ships that are being smashed by gravity into the dying planet.

My screams are silent now, the pain too great for me to draw breath for noise. The bonds are all but broken, the final one snapping as the last of my people is killed by the weapon I employed. I'm on the floor now, in a pool of my own blood, curled up in a ball as agony screams through every fibre of my being, claws at my mind and soul. I don't know how long I lie there, unable to move, locked in a hell that is no more than I deserve.

I move, I open my eyes, red scabs crusted over my lashes and caking my sockets. I try to sit up, but there is no strength left in me. And I can feel, hear … nothing.

The Force is gone from me. I can hear nothing of it, no sound, no whisper of the stars and life across the galaxy, the voice of every living thing. It's gone, just … gone.

It's as if I'm deaf and blind, but worse. Once I could sense the stars, once I was part of every living creature and they were part of me. Now I am … nothing. I feel, hear, see … nothing.

I live, if you can call it that. But I think I'm no longer alive.

But I can hear, in a way. The deaths I felt when the planet died - I can hear them still, in my head, as if they're dying still. Clamouring for mercy, to be saved, for an end to their pain, in mindless, unreasoning terror, friend and foe alike. They will never end, I already know that, so soon after their deaths though it may be. I know I will never have peace.

The deaths of Malachor V will echo within me forever.

**End of Story**

Well, there you have it. A bit different to Divergent Destiny (which I will be continuing with shortly - I just felt I had to write this after finishing KotOR II for the first time!) Not always coherent, perhaps, but this is kind of stream of consciousness on the Exile's part. I wanted to examine his/her (it could be either) feelings, emotions and thoughts on that fateful day. So please, click on that Review button and let me know what you think!


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